Dream in the Rock, 15th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): I have a confession to make - ever since August 2024, when I began in earnest my current practice of alternating walking and sitting days, I wasn't literally sitting every other day. I was instead using what's called the seiza posture, a form of kneeling, with the zafu (meditation cushion) under my butt for support. I have a seiza bench but rarely use it - it's more for the convenience of guests although I admit I used it once or twice during last December's Rohastsu intensive practice period.

Traditionally, there's nothing wrong with seiza - it's still zazen, but just kneeling instead of sitting. Everybody's different and every body is different, and for this old man who's sacrificed some or most of his flexibility by sitting behind a desk for some 30 years, and then loafing in retirement for the past seven, cross-legged sitting is difficult. 

Difficult, but not impossible, and today I decided to sacrifice some comfort and sat cross-legged, not in the lotus style with each foot on the opposite thigh (now that's impossible for me) but relaxed, with each foot on the floor near, but not on, the opposite knee. For the record, I used to sit that way regularly from like 2003 to at least 2013. 

It was a bit intense, especially at first, but I could feel the tendons and muscles or whatever stretching back out. Strangely, the meditation periods seemed to go by faster as my mind was focused more on my body than in idle daydreams.

There's no "right" or "wrong" posture for meditation - whatever works for you is fine. In my case, I want to take charge of my body and reorient myself to sit cross-legged while I still can, before the triple threat of sickness, old age, and death dictate that I can't sit at all anymore. Besides, it's good to have goals and something tangible and physical to work on as I practice my zazen.         

       

 

Separation of the First Stage, 14th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): At the risk of sounding repetitive, another beautiful day today. High in the mid 70s, low humidity, perfectly clear, +25-mile visibility.

I walked a 6.2-mile Quincy in the afternoon. I did take a shortcut this time, and even though I shaved off 1.5 miles, my phone recorded only 0.7 miles less than it did on Wednesday, when I avoided that shortcut. There are mileposts along the route, so I'm fairly confident I actually walked at least eight miles on Wednesday and 6.5 miles today.

Regardless, my walking hours are also my podcast listening time and today I listened to a very good conversation between Buddhist scholar and author Pema Chödrön and podcaster/journalist Ezra Klein. No great quotes to repeat and no new revelations for this old Zen student as it was fairly familiar ground to me, but it was still nice hearing them talk. Klein didn't quite come out as a Buddhist himself, but talked about his own meditation practice and techniques. Okay, one quote (from Ezra!): "Meditation is not a vacation from irritation."

It was one week ago today that I buried Eliot. I still half expect to see him whenever I walk into my den/tv room (his favorite hangout). I still am not quite sure what to do with myself at 7:00 pm (his routine feeding time). I'm more surprised than not that I don't hear his meows after the clock radio starts in the morning but I'm still laying in bed. There's no one to remind me when I've spent too much at the computer.

I miss him.   

  

 

Day of Fallacies, 13th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Yet another beautiful, picture-perfect day, continuing the long string of lovely weather we've been enjoying here in the South. I voted today, the penultimate day of early voting for the Georgia primary. I wonder how many more years I'll be able to freely vote, or at least vote in meaningful elections  

For some reason, the New York Times ran a long think piece today about Buddhism in Nepal, the first of a three-part "travel series" about the spread of Buddhism across Asia. The series, titled The Prince's Journey, is written by Aatish Taseer of Delhi, India, and future installments will cover Buddhism in Thailand and in Taiwan. Long on history and providing a broad overview of Buddhist teachings, it as informative and well written, although I'd hardly call it "travel" journalism. 

I found it amusing that when the author asked a teacher of Newar Buddhism, the indigenous variant of Buddhism practiced in the Kathmandu Valley, about the tension between the different branches of Buddhism, he was told, “When you look at a tree, you don’t concentrate on its different branches. You try and see the tree as a whole.” And then readers responded in the comments section with complaints that the author had overlooked this movement or that school or some other specific teacher or writer, all focused on the branches and not the tree. To his credit, Taseer personally replied to a great many of the complaints with grace and in a dignified manner.  

Separately, I saw a post on Facebook today by jazz trumpeter Steven Bernstein (Lounge Lizards, Sexmob), who I saw at Big Ears last March playing the music of Sly Stone with his Millennial Territory Orchestra. He was announcing, in a roundabout way, his new project, the ResoNation Trio, and noted, "I love blowing into a piece of metal and creating a sound, and using that sound to interact with other musicians/artists and making something new."

"My trumpet teacher, Jimmie Maxwell, was a Buddhist," he wrote. "We would talk about trumpet satori." 

I hadn't heard of Jimmie Maxwell, but a quick peek at his Wikipedia page tells me Maxwell (1917 – 2002) was an swing trumpeter who played with Benny Goodman's band from 1939 to 1943, later performing on Goodman's tour of the Soviet Union in 1962. He played on hundreds of recordings and commercials from 1950 to 1980 and worked as a sideman for, among others, Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, Gerry Mulligan, Maynard Ferguson, and Quincy Jones. He worked as a studio musician for NBC, playing on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show (1963–73), contributed the solo trumpet theme on the soundtrack of The Godfather, and taught from the late 1970s onwards.

And apparently was a Buddhist.

 

Day of the Rainhouses, 12th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): It's happening. Cheating Brian Kemp, who first got elected Governor of Georgia by suppressing minority votes as Secretary of State, had said that he would not redraw the State's electoral boundaries for this year’s elections (the primaries are on Tuesday). But today he called for a special session of the State Congress to redraw electoral maps for the 2028 election. Georgia is but the latest southern state to initiate new electoral maps after the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

Kemp said the session will focus on “enacting, revising, repealing, or amending” district lines for both the state legislature and congressional districts. Among other things, the Republicans may seek to eliminate the district of Democratic representative Sanford Bishop, a Black member of Congress who has served since 1993. 

The Supreme Court ruled last month that the districts Louisiana drew in accordance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents racial discrimination in voting, were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Effectively, the court’s decision dilutes Black and minority voting power, reversing years of civil-rights law.

My Arya Sansa list goes "John Roberts. Brett Kavanaugh. Clarence Thomas. Joseph Alito. Neil Gorsuch. Amy Boney Carrot. The Stable Genius. Mitch McConnell. And Aaron Judge," because the Yankees suck.  Also, not to forget the ladies: "Erica Kirk. Candace Owens. Kari Lake. Megyn Kelly. Lindsey Graham."

Meanwhile, another beautiful day today as the gorgeous weather here in Georgia continues. No rain, which is a drag, but day after day of temps in the 70s to very low 80s, low humidity, and clear skies, with pleasantly cool nights in the high 50s (good sleeping weather). I walked my usual 8½-mile Van Buren today, but for some reason the pedometer app on my iPhone only credited me with a 6½-mile Quincy. I swear I didn't take any shortcuts!    

 

The Wooden Works, 11th Day of Midsommer, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): You can't hurry love. 

    

 

Day of the Creaking Aftermath, 10th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): Firefighters have finally extinguished the Hwy. 82 wildfire in South Georgia, but the Pineland Road fire still covers 32,575 acres and is 87% contained. The drought continues and we're now 6.58 inches of rainfall below normal for this time of year. All indications still suggest that we're heading for a Super El Nino and the warming oceans will result in less mixing between the surface and deep waters, creating a phosphate shortage close to the surface, which creates favorable conditions for methane-producing microbes. Most of the methane produced through this process escapes to the atmosphere, and could almost double in the future under an aggressive global warming scenario. The Stable Genius, the twice-impeached, multiply-convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, is brazenly grifting off his presidency, and his crimes are woefully underreported in the press, ignored by the political left, and denied by the political right.    

All this, and the numb, empty feeling of life without Eliot in the house still lingers. It's like an extracted tooth, when the tongue can't stop probing the new void left behind.  

 

The Divine Versions, 9th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): I track my meditation with the health app on my phone. Every second day, when I'm finished  with my sitting, I enter the start and finish times as "Mindfulness Minutes." Not that practice requires an app, but keeping a record adds to my motivation - if I miss a day, there will be a visible gap in the record (the app records the minutes as a bar graph on a time scale).

I could lie and add minutes on a day I didn't actually sit, but what would be the point of that? Then I wouldn't be able to trust the app and wouldn't have a record of my effort. 

Anyway, to get to the point, I sat today (3:14 to 4:44 pm), but I missed last Friday, the day I had Eliot euthanized. Last Friday was the first day I missed, other than when I was at Big Ears, since October 13, 2025. Since April 20, 2025, I've only missed three days (other than Big Ears) - May 16, when I was waiting all day for an AC repairman to arrive, October 13, when the young man who would have been my stepson if life had gone differently was in town, and last Friday, May 8, when Eliot left this realm of existence.

Of course, it certainly wasn't zazen (sitting meditation), but a day spent digging a grave for your pet while he's still alive but asleep in the house, and being present at the veterinarian as he receives the fatal injection that ends his life, and then putting that pet in the ground and filling the grave with earth, is an exercise in mindfulness and a profound contemplation of life-and-death. It's certainly a better alibi for missing 90 minutes of sitting that waiting for the repairman.      

 

Day of the World Tree, 8th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Today was the first day in seventeen years without Eliot in the house. Weird. 

F'rinstance, when I woke up this morning, I was careful rolling over so as to not crush the cat that usually lies at the foot of my bed. Making my morning coffee, I kept expecting to see him catwalk into the kitchen to beg for a treat, you know, as long as I had the door open to that cabinet where the goodies are stored. Right now, it's approaching his feeding time, and it's strange not hearing him reminding me that it's almost time for dinner.

I gathered up and cleaned all his food dishes and water bowls today, as well as the various cardboard boxes scattered in corners around the house. I haven't put away the litter box yet - for some reason, that feels like the last and final act admitting he's gone for good

Eliot's health had been declining for over a year, with at least one vet suggesting squamous-cell carcinoma. But for the last week, he was barely able to get up at all, struggling to make occasional forays to the food dish and litter box. Other than that, he just spent the entire day curled up on a favorite chair. Thursday night, I saw him barely manage to make a simple one-foot leap from that chair to an end table, and then barely able to walk across that table to his water bowl, as if he was losing motor control of his legs. That's when I knew it was time. 

The vets were great, and had a special room set up for his departure with candles, a soothing white-noise generator, blankets, etc. They couldn't have been kinder, fussing over him with treats and head scratches to get him past his anxiety about being in a strange place. Or kinder to me, assuring me I was doing the right and humane thing. 

They gave the two of us a minute ("take as much time as you need") to say our goodbyes and then took him back to the O.R., or whatever it is back there, and gave him a sedative. They brought him back, asleep and wrapped in a blanket, and then with me present gave him a second injection that stopped his heart. He didn't flinch or react to the euthanasia and the vet, who had a finger on his pulse through the whole final procedure, announced "he's gone" just a few seconds after the injection. He died painlessly, comfortably, and quietly. 

I took his body home with me and placed him in a hole I had dug earlier in the day in the garden, next to where I buried his brother, Izzy. It was so difficult seeing him in the ground and to put the first shovelful of dirt over his body, and I can't say there weren't tears involved. Both cats now have heart-shaped gravestones next to their burial sites, which I can see from my kitchen window.

Impermanence is swift but our attachments can linger. 

Izzy died suddenly, unexpectedly, and apparently painlessly in his sleep, a winter afternoon nap from which he never awoke. Eliot died surrounded by loving people doing everything we could to keep him as comfortable as possible. 

I hope that when my time comes, it will be as painless and comfortable for me.

 

Day of the Holy Mountain, 7th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Impermanence is swift. 

Today I buried Eliot, age 17, my old tomcat, my feline friend and housemate, who had been in declining health for a year now. It was time. 

We won't see the likes of him again for a long while, and he will be missed.       

 

Day of the Marauders, 6th of Midsommer, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Last night, we watched the storm front approach. Meteorologists were updating their social media posts every hour. The Tornado Watch went into effect around 10:00 pm, while the flash flood warning had been in effect since 4:00. The evening news advised to be prepared for power outages and I heard the distant rumble of thunder as I went to bed.

When it was all said and done and the storm had finally passed, only 0.50 inches of rain fell on Atlanta, 0.08 inches before midnight, and 0.42 after. 

The rainfall wasn't evenly distributed. Nearby Peachtree Dekalb Airport (PDK), seven miles northeast of here, saw 1.47 inches before midnight and 0.47 after. Peachtree City, Georgia, about 30 miles southeast of here, had 2.32 inches before midnight and about the same as PDK and here after. Columbus, Georgia, about 100 miles southeast of here, had 1.32 inches of rain before midnight and 2.94 inches after, setting a new record for this date going going back to 1903. 

Peachtree Creek crested about six inches above its pre-rain stage, but nowhere near flood stage (17 inches). No floods and no tornados, for which I'm grateful, just a lot of media-generated anxiety over, well, a rainy night in Georgia.  

From the beginning of time, the Buddha taught, all beings have mistakenly identified themselves with that of which they are aware. Controlled by their experience of perceived objects, they lose track of their fundamental mind. In Buddhism, the thinking mind is conditioned, impermanent, and ever-changing, but the fundamental mind is always present and is the true essence of the self.  

When we lose sight of the true essence of the self (the fundamental mind), we identify ourselves as the subject that is facing the objects we encounter, and we discriminate among them, evaluate them, and chase after or escape from them. Being deluded by the discriminative thinking mind and losing the fundamental mind is a fundamental cause of suffering.

Jingqing asked a monk, “What sound is that outside the gate?” The monk said, “The sound of raindrops.” Jingqing said, “Sentient beings are inverted. They lose themselves and follow after things.” 

Zen Master Dogen wrote, 

Just hearing,

Without extra mind,

The jewel-like raindrops

Dripping from the eaves

Are me.

 

Day of the Everlasting Moraine, 5th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Today, Aldebaran, we begin our first full week of Midsommar. Along with the new season, we're forecast to finally get some much-needed seasonal rain. One to four, or maybe even more, inches of rainfall is expected in the Atlanta region, creating a high risk of flash flooding. A Flood Watch is in effect through tomorrow morning, along with warnings about damaging lightning, thunder, and wind.

Dry as the proverbial bone all year, and then almost a quarter of what's fallen all year expected in the next 24 hours. Good times. Today was a sitting day, but I may not get my steps in tomorrow.

The news is nattering on about the Stable Genius' supposed "victory" yesterday in Indiana. Five of  seven incumbent congressmen who defied him by refusing to redraw the state's political map lost their primary bids in what the Times, MS NOW, and most of the rest of the media and calling "revenge" by the Stable Genius, who endorsed their challengers. Social media is full of posts wondering what's wrong with Indiana and disparaging Indiana voters for bending the knee to the will of the Stable Genius.

I think the press and the posters are looking at it all wrong. It was a primary, not a general election, and for all we know, Democrats may flip all seven seats, although that's not likely in ruby-red Indiana. But what we saw in Indiana was Republican voters voting for Republican candidates, which is hardly newsworthy. Although it's getting far less coverage, Democratic voters voted for Democratic candidates in the same primary election. 

And no one can say with certainty that the five of seven challengers who won, won because of the Stable Genius' endorsement. I find it unlikely that every voter who voted against the incumbents did so because they were upset over the lack of redistricting or because the Stable Genius told them to. Polls reportedly show that few are happy with the direction of this country and the state of the economy, and it's a tough year to be running as an incumbent, especially a Republican incumbent. Five of seven Republican incumbents losing their primaries is a sign that Indiana voters are dissatisfied with the status quo and want to see change.

But the press has a massive case of Stable Genius Derangement Syndrome and often can't seem to cover any story without it having to be all about the S.G. one way or another. What was essentially a rejection of the state's existing representation is covered in the media as a political victory for the Stable Genius, even as his poll numbers are tanking and his other endorsed candidates are losing left and right all across the country.

R.I.P., Ted Turner. Impermanence is swift.

 

Day of the Blue Circle, 4th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): Another day in paradise. I know many people who wouldn't want to live in Georgia for a number of reasons, from "too Red" to "too Black," and also including the weather ("too hot" or "too humid"). But friends, let me tell you, for much of April and May (as well as mid-September to mid-November), the weather here is ideal. Couldn't be more lovely. Days like today. 

I took advantage of the weather and walked a 9.6-mile Harrison. While I was walking I listened to a podcast conversation between singer-songwriter Bill Callahan (Smog) and actor Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos). I hadn't known that Imperioli was a practicing Buddhist, but he seemed to be sincere about his practice and not just a Hollywood, "I-once-read-an-article-about-it" kind of Buddhist. 

When Callahan brought up reincarnation, Imperioli said he's often asked about that but the thing is, Buddhist teachings hold that there is no inherent existence to the self. "So, what," Imperioli asked rhetorically, "is getting reincarnated?"

People often think of it as, he explained, as "Michael has a consciousness" - some might say, "soul." But it's actually the opposite. "It's like consciousness in this period of time had a Michael that attached itself somehow to it," he said, and it's consciousness that will go on and have another incarnation, not Michael.

"It's not my consciousness that's going on, it's consciousness got attached to these aggregates that make up this being in this life. So the way I've tried to see it is like consciousness is kind of like the fabric of the universe or something, and this physical kind of thing gets attached to it and another physical thing will get attached to it maybe in the future." 

That's a very good explanation by Imperioli. The way my teacher explained it to me, another way of looking at it is that the "physical thing" is kind of like a knot that forms in the fabric of the universe. We can distinguish between this knot and that knot, but it's really all just fabric and not two separate things. And knots can get untied and smoothed out from time to time and new ones arise, but it's still all fabric. And another word for that fabric is consciousness. 

I'd like to hear a conversation between Michael Imperioli and Michael Pollan. I'd walk a Harrison to hear them talk.

 

On Last Legs, 3rd Day of Midsommer, 526 M.E. (Electra): It's another lovely, sunny, non-humid day today, albeit a tad warmer but still comfortably in the 70s. Of course, it still hasn't rained and we're over six inches below normal on the year.

Wildfires are still raging down in South Georgia, although firefighters have made some progress on the Hwy. 82 fire. It's now 75% contained and they've reduced its size by over 50 acres, although it still covers 22,471 acres. The Pineland Road fire is 32,575 acres and 44% contained.

Yes, it's a beautiful day, even as the planet is warming, wildfires are raging, and sea levels are rising. Sea-level rise and the erosion of wetlands in occurring so rapidly in southern Louisiana that a recent paper published in the journal, Nature Sustainability, calls the region the “most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world" and advises immediate action to begin evacuating people away from New Orleans to safer ground.

New Orleans will be swallowed up by the sea within a few generations, and the city may be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century. That's still some 75 years away and our mammalian brains, evolved to react to immediate threats while ignoring longer-term dangers, files that information away as nothing to worry about right now. Maybe we shouldn't invest our money into New Orleans condominiums right now, we reason, but other than that, why should we change our current behviour?   

Billions of dollars have already been spent to fortify New Orleans with a vast network of levees, floodgates and pumps erected after Hurricane Katrina. But coastal Louisiana has already crossed a point of no return according to the paper, and the growing threats to the area mean the levees, which already require hefty upgrades to remain sufficient, will not be able to save the city in the long run. Even if climate change ended today, New Orleans still couldn't be saved. It will be surrounded by open water and it's impossible to keep an island situated below sea level afloat. No amount of money can do that.

Here's a lesson I learned decades ago in Geology 101: levees built on soft Mississippi delta sediments have weight which causes them to sink, so the Corps of Engineers builds them higher, which increases the weight, which makes them subside more, which requires them to be built still higher, and so on and so forth in a never-ending cycle. This isn't some Al Gore inconvenient truth or Greta Thunberg alarmism - this was boring, basic geology as taught in the 1970s.

The Stable Genius has got the United States military locked into a strategic stalemate with Iran in the Gulf of Hormuz, through which some 20% of the world's oil moves, or used to move. The effects of the blockades will be felt for years, even if the crisis were to be resolved today. Last Wednesday, the Stable Genius held a 90-minute telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, and then on Friday, announced he was pulling 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany, fulfilling at least one bucket-list item from Putin's wish list. The Supreme Court has thrown gasoline onto the gerrymander redistricting war by basically voiding the Voting Rights Act, and things won't go well as millions of Americans realize they've either been disenfranchised or their votes have become meaningless as they're forced to vote in districts in which their preferred candidate is predestined to lose.  

So in short, yes, the world's going to hell and none of this is going to end well for anybody, but it's a beautiful day and birds are singing and the sun is shining. Why can't I just be happy with that?

 

Day of the Swan, 2nd of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The weather's been dry but cool. That front that came through late last week and woke me up but didn't produce any rain at least produced some pleasant temperatures. Even if we are heading into a Super El Nino and already setting records for global high temperatures, today, this moment, right now, is cool (70°), dry, and sunny.  

I walked a 9.3-mile Harrison today. I had my headphones on and listed to the better part of three LPs by Fire! Orchestra while walking, but it was the kind of day that an old Beatles song gets stuck in your head: "The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful, and so are you, dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?" Also, 

The wind is low, the birds will sing

That you are part of everything

Dear Prudence, won't you open up your eyes?

I was 14 when The White Album came out. I got it that year for Christmas and memorized every lyric to every song by singing along. I've long since stopped listening to The Beatles or even thinking about their songs, until, of course, a day like today.  

The world might be an overheated rotten mess, but today was a lovely day.

 

Establishment of the Dreamweapon, 1st Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Spring has sprung and we're now into Midsommar, and yes, I took the name of the season from the Ari Aster movie, and in keeping with the film, I'm recycling last year's summer avatar, the Sun Girl, as The May Queen.  Midsommar (the season, not the movie) begins with Establishment of the Dreamweapon and ends (spoiler alert!) 61 days from now with Launching of the Dreamweapon.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, several southern states are predictably rushing to redraw their congressional maps now that the Roberts Court has ruled that it's okay to gerrymander the shit out of one's state as long as you don't say out loud that you're doing it to disenfranchise Minority voters. Naturally, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi are already introducing measures to redraw districts, while Florida just went all in and redrew them based on the governor's executive power, without any input from elected representatives, because why even pretend it's about democracy?

As Ibram X. Kendi puts it, the Roberts Court claims anti-Black racism is over in order to allow racist state legislators to engineer the largest disenfranchisement of Black voters in history. The Court is returning the United States to Jim Crow by claiming Jim Crow won’t return. Last night on the deplorable Bill Maher show, conservative columnist Bret Stephens said he agreed with SCOTUS that the Voting Rights Act addressed conditions that no longer exist, and that the Court "got it right" this rime. Pro-tip: they didn't.

My home state of Georgia announced that they will not redistrict before this year's elections. But it's not integrity or fairness holding them back. Early voting for the May 19th primary has already begun, and it's virtually impossible to change the district maps at this point. But mark my words, as soon as the general election is over on November 3, the all-red Georgia legislature will gerrymander the fuck out of this state, regardless of the election results. Even if Georgia completely flips each and every Republican seat to the Dems, the lame-duck state legislature will still redraw the district maps to disenfranchise every Black, Latino, and Asian voter they can, and try to make it "stick" with as many rules against revising the map as possible.

No, Georgia Governor Brain Kemp isn't "fair-minded" or a "moderate." If anything, he's a pragmatist or, more likely, simply an opportunist who knows what he can get away with and when. This is the man who, as Secretary of State in 2018, rigged his gubernatorial race against Stacy Abrams by stalling the applications of more than 53,000 voters, including a "disproportionately high" number of Black voters, in an obvious case of voter suppression.

It's still dry here in Georgia although rain last week provided some relief for workers fighting to  contain the wildfires in South Georgia. But the rainfall forecast for this weekend hasn't really materialized here in Atlanta and we're still some 5.93 inches below normal for the year. The Pineland Road wildfire near the Okefenokee down in Clinch County is still at 32,575 acres and the Highway 82 fire in Brantley County has grown to 22,532 acres, but both are now about 45% contained.

 

Last Day of the Western Isles, 61st of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Last Day of the Western Isles and last day of Spring, which started 61 days ago with Day of the Western Isles. Last day of the Spring avatar, the Earth Mother, as well. Tomorrow is the start of Midsommar, and with it the return of the Sun Girl as our seasonal avatar. 

By the time the Civil War had ended in 1865, formerly enslaved men and women in the defeated Confederate states were legally free in accordance with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment, the first of three “Reconstruction Amendments,” abolished slavery in the United States. Two years later, the Fourteenth Amendment granted full citizenship for all Americans. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to all American men regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” 

For a brief period of time, Reconstruction afforded the right to freely vote to formerly enslaved African-American men. Reconstruction fell apart following the highly contested 1877 election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes after Democrats agreed to concede the election in exchange for the withdrawal of all federal troops from the former Confederacy. Exploitative systems of convict leasing and sharecropping soon followed and returned many Black people to a status very similar to slavery, and obstacles such as literacy tests and poll taxes were enacted by White officials to suppress the Black vote. But between 1970 and 1890, African-American men had been elected to public office in some Black-majority towns. 

Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, a book by Canter Brown, Jr. (1998, University of Alabama Press), notes that some neighborhoods in and around Jacksonville, Florida, such as LaVilla, proved to be  fertile grounds for minority office holding. Brown counts a minimum of forty-six African Americans as serving in local governments from at least 1870 to the towns' consolidation with Jacksonville in 1887. This is significant to me, just as voting rights are personally significant to me, because my great-grandfather, Sylvanus Henry Hart, who was born on a plantation in South Carolina in 1860 and lived the first five years of his life in slavery, was elected as town clerk of LaVilla during the 1880s. 

My great-grandfather was one of those few Black men elected to public office in the Reconstruction South in that window of time between federal enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment and the era of Jim Crow. It wasn't until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Jim Crow era (but not racism) finally ended. The Voting Rights Act was the United States' attempt to restore the system of equal rights that had allowed by great-grandfather to once hold the office of Town Clerk in LaVilla, Florida.     

So, yeah, I take the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act by the corrupt and illegitimate SCOTUS personally.

 

The Humming Cloud, 60th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): For the second night in a row, I was awakened by the sound of thunder and rain. I'm glad to have sacrificed some sleep to get some much-needed precip. An inch fell yesterday, on what you would call the 29th of April, bringing the month-to-date rainfall up to to 1¾ inches. That's well below the 3⅔-inch norm for April, but we'll take whatever we can get. We're still six inches below normal for the year.

The Supreme Court's decision yesterday eviscerating what's left of the Voting Rights Act has many people asking if the United States is a racist country. That's a difficult question. Is every citizen a racist? No, of course not. Are the majority of citizens racist? Harder to answer, but I like to believe "no." 

Let's apply Ibram X. Kendi's test to determine the nation's racism. Setting aside the question of personal values and intentions, are the outcomes of the United States' actions and policies  disproportionately harmful to racial minorities or other ethnic groups?

The so-called "Kavanaugh rule," a recent Supreme Court decision that says police and immigration agents can use skin color to identify suspects for deportation and other actions, is inherently and irreducibly racist. The rule is now the law of the land, and I think most members of the Latino and Hispanic communities would say they frequently experience some form or another of racism, while the immigrant portion of that community lives with fear and anxiety almost beyond comprehension.

The African-American community regularly experiences discrimination, suffers economic inequality more acutely, and are disproportionately subject to police harassment and intimidation. Although Justice Alito and other members of the Court apparently believe that racism is a thing of the past, it's the lived experience of a great many Black Americans.

Internationally, the whole world experiences the effects of discriminatory polices of the United States. The dismantling of USAID affects African countries far more than any others. Although the Stable Genius has threatened to take Greenland away from Denmark "by any means necessary" and has spoken disparagingly about NATO, the actual counties he's used the military against include Venezuela (Hispanic), Nigeria (Black), and Iran (Islamic). I can't think of any military action we've taken yet this century against a country with a predominantly White population. 

The United States is a country founded on the twin pillars of enslavement of Africans and the genocide of its indigenous population. For 250 years, it has legislated and enshrined a long series of policies that serve the interests of the majority white (and male) population over those of others and often at the expense of those others. Any countermeasures intended to level the playing field have been called "socialism" (as if that were a bad thing) or worse, and are being systematically removed by a conspicuously Caucasian Executive Branch and judiciary. 

So even if all or even most of its citizens aren't motivated by racism, it's hard to deny that the outcomes of its laws, policies, and actions are skewed against certain racial groups, and by the measure, yes, the USA is a racist nation.

 

The Crimson Delight, 59th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Helios): In a landmark decision today, the US Supreme Court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map. In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.

“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. “Compliance with Section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the middle district’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

To be sure, the Civil Rights Act, including Section 2, was not written to give minority voters a disproportionately greater advantage at the polls. It was designed to keep majority voters from denying a proportionate share of votes to minority communities. The Court is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The court’s decision gives lawmakers permission to draw districting plans that further increase the influence of White majority voters, an unconstitutional use of race in government decision making.  

Within hours of the court’s ruling, Florida’s legislature already approved a new Republican-friendly map that could give Republicans up to four additional seats, and state officials across the South have indicated that they also intend to pursue changes to their maps that could take effect in time for November's elections.

The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 and resulted in a number of districts, particularly in the South, where nonwhite voters make up the majority, allowing them to elect the candidates of their choice. But Justice Alito argued that “vast social change” in the South and elsewhere made such considerations no longer necessary. Discrimination that occurred years or decades ago, he wrote for the majority, as well as certain “present-day disparities,” are “entitled to much less weight” now.

"Racism is over." That may be the privileged view of a wealthy, entitled white jurist in D.C., but does not reflect the lived experiences of other people’s lives in 2026. Racially polarized voting is still a reality in the South, as is the racial wealth gap, the educational achievement gap, and health outcome gap. Discrimination claims are still rampant in employment.

As Ibram X. Kendi summarized it, "The Court of White Supremacy reaffirmed the myth that intent—not outcome—determines if a policy is racist." The history of racism teaches us that policies should be defined as racist based on their outcome. Intent can be hidden - lawmakers can hide their intent to suppress Black political power when they try to eliminate majority Black districts. An unjust outcome can’t be hidden.

SCOTUS is now a sick and corrupt institution and there's no ready remedy. At the very least, a  progressive and activist POTUS is needed to expand the court with new appointees to overcome the racist, bigoted, and tragically out-of-touch influences of Alito, Clarence, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, et al.

 

The Taught Lists, 58th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Electra): I woke up to the sound of thunder around 6:00 am this morning, hopeful that some rain may have finally come to end this extreme drought here in Georgia. But apparently, the weather was just dry heaving, as no rain accompanied the thunder. All sound and fury, but no precip.

Republicans are saying that since a gunman had entered a hotel at which the president was speaking last Saturday and fired shots in the next room, taxpayers should give the Stable Genius $400 million to construct a ballroom at the White House. Never mind that the gunman never made it through security - the system worked - and there were still like 100 armed Secret Service agents between the gunman and the president when the shooter was apprehended. Never mind that the Stable Genius claimed the ballroom will be paid for by private donations when he had the East Wing of the White House demolished to make space for his ballroom.

Presidential staff and White House correspondents are all over the news talking about how traumatic it was for them to hear gunfire in the next room. Welcome to America - if you haven't heard gunfire by now, you should probably have your hearing checked. But instead of a ballroom, may I suggest the president and his staff do what they insist millions of schoolchildren have to do, and just duck beneath their desks until the shooting stops? If you're so shook hearing gunshots in a hotel, imagine what it's like for an eight-year-old under a desk at school seeing their dead classmates on the floor.

At least two-thirds of Americans agree with me that this country is on the wrong track, with some polls showing as many as 80% of Americans, particularly Gen Z adults, believe we're on the wrong track. A significant number of Americans view the economy negatively, with polls showing that 47% rate the economy as "poor" and three quarters believing economic conditions are worsening, with high fuel prices influencing their views. According to AAA, the average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline just hit $4.18, the highest price since April 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. 

Public trust in government has been low for decades, and a Pew Research poll found that a mere 2% of Americans say they trust the government to do what is right “just about always,” while 15% trust it “most of the time.” The current measures are among the lowest in the nearly seven decades of polling, and are lower than last year (22%). Only about 38% of Americans say patriotism is "very important" to them, down from 70% in 2000, and half of all adults between the ages of 18 and 29 say they are not very or not at all patriotic.

Congressional polarization has reached its highest point since Reconstruction, and threats of violence against politicians have surged. Some draw parallels between the United States and Weimer Germany, and others to the Soviet Union in its final years - a brittle gerontocracy rotting from within - while some argue that the country is on the brink of a civil war.

But sure, let's build the president a gauche, $400-million, gold-plated ballroom, because ya gotta dance, right?

 

The Ariven Power, 57th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Today is a walking day, and I took it leisurely with a 5.7-mile Monroe. Thoughts while walking today:

• Can there be matter without energy? Or energy without matter? Are they interdependent entities or two expressions of the same thing?


• I always understood E = mc² as describing the energy that can be derived from matter, like, say, in an atomic bomb or a nuclear reactor, but all equations are basically two-way streets so it also describes how matter can arise from energy. 


• Matter arising from energy is a way of describing the universe turning itself inside out from nothing to become something. The physical universe arose from the limitless energy of pure Potential to form galaxies, quarks, planets, rhinoceri, humans, and today's Monroe.


• To be clear, the limitless energy of pure Potential is not the same thing as "potential energy" as commonly used in non-quantum physics. Lower-case p potential energy requires matter to manifest; upper case P Potential exists prior to and independent of matter.

I also thought about the weather, music, sex, and food, specifically: 

• Weather: Nice today


• Music: Linda Ronstadt's Blue Bayou is basically the same melody as Roy Orbison's Crying, with only minor compositional changes to fit the different lyrics, but no one ever suggested copyright infringement and no one ever should. It's okay to recycle a good melody.


• Sex: A woman wearing tight leggings passed me on the Beltline trail. What would it take, what would I have to do or say, for her to let me hold and spread her buttocks apart? What would that be like, feel like, smell like? 


• Food: The smoothie I made for lunch today is holding me over quite nicely this afternoon. 

How was your day?

Day of Vestiges, 56th of Spring 526 M.E. (Castor):  A man in Washington D.C. fired a gun at the White House correspondents' dinner in the vicinity of numerous journalists, who got a first-hand taste of the terror schoolchildren and others across America have been experiencing on a daily basis for years. Watching the Sunday morning news shows, you'd think the journalists were only just now realizing that the proliferation of handguns has made America a dangerous place.   

Speaking of danger, the two wildfires in South Georgia have now destroyed more than 120 homes and continue to threaten property and lives.  The fires are a result of a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, and dead trees still littering forests after being toppled by Hurricane Helene in 2024.

The Highway 82 fire has been burning since Monday and has destroyed at least 87 homes. The fire started when a foil balloon hit a power line, creating an electrical arc that ignited combustible material on the ground. The fire now covers more than 14.8 square miles and it is only about 10% contained.

The Pineland Road fire near the Florida state line has burned more than 46.9 square miles and destroyed at least 35 homes. Started by sparks from a welding operation, that wildfire was also about 10% contained as of yesterday.

An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring all across the south-eastern U.S.  Firefighters have been battling more than 150 other wildfires in Georgia and Florida that have sent smoky haze into places far from the flames, triggering air quality warnings for some cities.

Warming temperatures and heat stress, among other issues associated with climate change, can affect human hormones and fertility. Research published in the journal Emerging Contaminants found that the impacts of climate change, coupled with simultaneous exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly found in plastic, likely generates a synergistic effect that increases reproductive harm and may contribute to the global drop in fertility.

Sperm levels among men in western countries has decreased by more than 50% over four decades. Human fertility has been diminishing at a similar rate as the world approaches a low-fertility future, with more than three quarters of countries falling below replacement rates by 2050. 

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals and substances, including microplastics, bisphenol, phthalates, and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), cause a range of reproductive issues. Phthalates have been linked to reduced sperm counts in humans and PFAS are thought to impact sperm quality. Both are linked to hormone disruption and are commonly found in consumer goods.

However, ICE is planning a detention facility (i.e., concentration camp) for children and families on the former England Air Force Base in Alexandria, Louisiana. Groundwater testing at former firefighting training areas there have found PFAS at levels as high as 41,000,000 parts per trillion (ppt), vastly higher than the federal drinking-water limits of 4 to 10 ppt.  Military bases are commonly contaminated with PFAS, but England’s groundwater had the highest levels ever recorded, making it among the most PFAS-contaminated sites in the US. Groundwater was also contaminated by the carcinogen trichloroethylene (TCE) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs).    

Groundwater is not used as a drinking-water source at the base, but exposure to PFAS in the shallow groundwater can still occur at springs and seeps and during flood events. Also, the contaminants can spread to soil, affecting children playing outdoors and anyone inhaling dust. Further, the contaminants, particularly TCE and other VOCs, can vaporize and mix with air, affecting anyone and anything that breathes. 

In happier news, a big-game hunter from California was trampled to death last week by an elephant in central Africa.

 

Cardhouse of the Awaited, 55th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Today, the I Ching gave me Ming Yi (Eclipsing the Light), Hexagram 36. Earth above, fire below. 

Some scholars suggest that the words Ming Yi might once have been the name for a bird. The moving line, line six, reads, "Its broken wing mended, the pheasant is released to its fate. Realizing that darkness co-exists with the light in its own heart, it transcends the bonds of good and evil, and freely roams the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell."

These times call for a saintly effort to turn the other cheek, the oracle advises. Although you've been deliberately injured, going blow for blow will only escalate this war. Abstain from vengeance. Show all watching that you are above it. Sidestep your aggressors' headlong charge, giving them the opportunity to fall on their face.

Good advice, although I can't really think of an aggressor that I need to sidestep right now. The Stable Genius? These modern times? As I sit in this pile of bricks on a hill with tons of lumber towering over my head in the form of trees, my personal Sword of Damocles, my greatest adversary is probably extreme climate, but how do you sidestep the weather? 

The fire below: the Pineland Road wildfire down in South Georgia now covers around 32,000 acres and is still only about 10% contained. The Highway 82 wildfire and has fallen from 15% contained to only 10% contained, and has nearly doubled in size, growing to about 9,500 acres. The wind is currently pushing the smoke from the fires toward the northeast.  A cold front moving in across the state brings a slight chance of rain but will also a cause a shift in wind direction, with the wind coming out of the west tomorrow. 

The ground outside is wet right now from some trace of rain that must have fallen earlier today, although I missed it. Right now, it's overcast and cool (61°) outside, at least with regard to yesterday (83°). It's a walking day, but I don't think I'll get my steps in as the weather doesn't look reliably dry enough. Would that be sidestepping the weather?

 

Day of the High Road, 54th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran):  The latest figures indicate that 71% of Georgia is currently under extreme drought. Only 9.87 inches of rain have fallen on Atlanta since the beginning of the year, down from the normal value of 16.76 for this time of year. Worse, only 4.16 inches of that rain have fallen since March 1, and 0.13 since April 1. It's like someone turned the spigot off.

Meanwhile, wildfires are sweeping across parts of Georgia and have burned tens of thousands of acres so far while destroying 87 homes. In South Georgia, the Pineland Road fire has burned over 29,600 acres and is only 10% contained and the Highway 82 fire is only 15% contained with over 4,438 acres burned. Meanwhile, crews were working last night to contain an active wildfire in West Georgia and firefighters in North Georgia were trying to contain a wildfire that started earlier in the day near homes close to Lake Allatoona. In all, the Georgia Forestry Commission says it responded to 34 new wildfires across the state on Wednesday, although the biggest concerns remain the ongoing wildfires in South Georgia.

With ongoing drought conditions and no significant rainfall in sight, wildfire concerns remain elevated across the state. Morning showers are currently forecast for Tuesday and Thursday of next week, with scattered thundershowers forecast for Wednesday and Friday.  The rain may dowse the wildfires, but we'll need a lot more than that to make up the deficit from the drought. 

The 2026 super El Niño may come to our rescue, at least with regard to the drought, although it will probably bring its own set of crises.  The transition to a super El Niño could potentially bring more rapid temperature variations, higher-than-normal humidity, and a reduced risk of widespread summer drought. Although we haven't seen it so far, super El Niño typically brings cooler, wetter conditions in the spring. El Niño also increases wind shear across the Atlantic, which can suppress hurricane formation, suggesting a lower likelihood of a hyperactive season. The super El Niño is expected to bring a wetter, stormier, and potentially even colder winter to Georgia, with an increased risk of heavy rain, localized flooding, and high-impact weather, driven by a stronger subtropical jet stream steering rain-producing systems over the Southeast.

 

Day of the Field, 53rd of Spring, 525 M.E. (Helios): I walked an 8.3-mile Van Buren this afternoon in 80°, sunny weather. On sunny days, people generally report feeling optimistic and positive about their lives more frequently than when asked the same question on rainy or gloomy days. 

Not to deliberately buck that trend with sad news, but scientists are warning the AMOC, a major Atlantic current that helps regulate climate, may be closer to failure than expected. If it goes, it'll mean harsher weather, sea-level rise, food stress, and wider instability. You're not hearing more about it because governments and the wealthy keep minimizing long-term risks to protect short term interests.

As The Guardian explains it, the poor pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the very rich pay lawyers, and the ultra-rich pay politicians. The more money billionaires accumulate, the greater their control of the political system, which means they pay less tax, which means they accumulate more, which means their control intensifies. They reshape the world to suit their demands. 

One of the symptoms of the pathology known as “billionaire brain” is an inability to see beyond their own short-term gain. They would sack the planet for a few more dollars on the pointless mountain of wealth they've accumulated. 

The impending collapse of the AMOC is arguably the biggest news of the year, perhaps of the century. But because billionaires own most of the media, most people never heard it. We might find ourselves suffering a civilization-ending catastrophe before we even learn that such a thing was possible.

 

Day of the Frontier, 52nd of Spring, 526 M.E. (Electra): On Earth Day, it's worth remembering that we do not stand apart from the world we inhabit. We don't live on the Earth, we are the Earth itself. We're just some of the planet's many atoms and molecules rearranged in a different system than the atoms and molecules of trees and grasses, mountains and rivers, oceans and continents. Every atom in your body came from some other part of the Earth - dust from dust, and to dust, etc.  

We're all part of an intricate global web of interdependence in which the well-being of each being is bound up with the well-being of all. A cosmic web, if he look at it from a higher level of perspective. 

To care for the earth is to express wisdom. To protect what is fragile is to embody compassion. To live simply and responsibly is a form of awakened action.

The Listening Path, 51st Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Deneb): One of the Stable Genius' favorite sayings, which he falsely claims to be from Abraham Lincoln, is “A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.”  

The Stable Genius' problem, however, is that his friendship is little better than his animosity. Even when it is obviously in his own interest to help those who are loyal and useful, to build alliances with other nations, or to earn the trust of the voters, he cannot be relied upon to do so.

As the war in Iran enters its eighth week, the Stable Genius' declarations have grown increasingly deranged, seesawing between declarations of violence and peace, between hellfire and ceasefire, between civilizational destruction and international comity, a manic approach to negotiating that has been euphemistically described in the press as “mixed messages.” It's time to set the euphemisms aside and recognize that the president is not simply feigning madness.

His apologists and sycophants like to say that in his chaotic mind lurks the "Madman Theory” - a term coined by Richard Nixon to describe “a belief that acting crazy is a rational strategy.” However, far from a performance designed to forward American interests, never mind prevent an expensive and unpopular war, the Stable Genius' homicidal hysteria appears to be genuinely psychotic, both to voters and to America’s allies. 

His erratic behavior does not indicate a mere "high capacity for irrationality.” He is actually and wildly irrational. His behavior only makes sense if one assumes his own voters and his potential international allies are also legitimate targets of his the mad threats, if they too are to be terrorized by the specter of the deranged emperor. 

The Stable Genius’ madman act has a logic only if the president really sees both voters and allies as enemies to be intimidated.

 

The Whispering Legions, 50th Day of Spring, 526 M.E.(Castor):  Four years ago, I wrote that I don’t like the state of this world and can barely even recognize my own country. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

Climate change is ravaging the planet as levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise. The oceans, choked with plastic, are dying and we're well into the 6th Extinction. Authoritarianism and outright fascism are on the rise all over the world. And we’re closer to nuclear war than we’ve been at any time since the Cold War years of the 60s and 70s.

Domestically, half my fellow citizens, preoccupied by ludicrous claims and fictional scenarios, are accepting of the most outlandish conspiracy theories imaginable and rejecting the very principles of democracy on which this country was founded. Stupidity and ignorance are no longer barriers to holding political office, and some politicians even seem to treat them as assets to be proudly displayed. Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, islamophobia, sexism, and any other form of hatred or intolerance you can imagine are present in virtually all aspects of our lives. White Christian Nationalism seems to be the platform of at least one major political party, and cruelty their default position. And economic inequality is at an all-time high, with a small sub-percentage of the people controlling the vast majority of the wealth. It’s as if we’re teetering between “Brave New World” and “Idiocracy.” 

I’d leave the U.S., but in all honesty there seems to be nowhere that’s not infected with these modern illnesses. Frying pan to the fire in many cases. 

Life’s not all grim and there are small oases of peace, joy, and happiness out there. But they’re like small distractions from the bigger crises - “Here, look at this funny meme," while the house is burning down. 

Four years ago, I did not like the times and had great trepidation about what things would be like after the upcoming election, whichever party prevailed. Same situation today.

Day of the Overseer, 49th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Yes, this blog uses AI-generated imagery for its pictures and has for several years now. I like it, and at least for me it solves the ethical problem of appropriation of other people's artwork. If your argument is that AI is stealing the work of others, you need to educate yourself on how generative AI actually works. 

However, the writing here is 100% human generated, assuming as I do that I'm a human. How would I know, though? Does merely believing I'm human make me one? But that's a sidetrack I don't feel like following today. 

Just for laughs, just to see what happens, I asked ChatGPT to write a post for this blog. Taking the title of this blog, here's what it came up with:

Some of the most powerful transformations happen when like meets like. In a world obsessed with differences, we often overlook the quiet, almost invisible ways similarity creates change: ideas blending into new perspectives, emotions finding resonance in others, communities forming through shared experience. Just as water seamlessly merges with itself, dissolving boundaries without resistance, we too have the capacity to connect, adapt, and evolve when we recognize what we have in common. Maybe the real lesson isn’t about chemistry at all, but about how fluid life becomes when we stop trying to stay separate.

If a person had written that, I might think they were trying a little too hard to sound "deep" or were virtue-signaling a tad too much, but otherwise say a job well done. Considering how little it had to go on, just the prompt "blog post for Water Dissolves Water," it's actually not a bad attempt at all. I'm pretty sure most people couldn't do better given that small bit of input and only one minute to write a paragraph.

I'm old. My formative years were in the 1960s and 1970s. I grew up pre-internet, and computers were things that filled rooms in places like IBM headquarters and had spinning reels of magnetic tape. Now, I see self-driving Waymo cars on the street, phones have become indispensable pocket computers with all the world's information at my fingertips, and artificial intelligence can create images and write essays as good or better than I can. I didn't really think that I'd live long enough to see science fiction become reality.

In any case, I'm not turning this blog over to Sam Altman. AI hasn't and won't start writing these posts. Even if you can convince me it can do that better than me, I still need something to do, some outlet to directly express myself, and I'm not about to start outsourcing myself. 

Even if I am fairly impressed by that paragraph above.

 

The Inlet, The Reddening, 48th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran) - I don't know why it happened, but when I turned my television on yesterday morning, it was tuned to the Fox News channel. 

I don't have my television set to a default station, so whenever I turn it on, it airs the last channel I was watching. Yesterday morning, the appearance of the Fox News channel means that I must have been watching that cesspool of misinformation last thing the night before. But I have no memory of watching Fox News that night and can't for the life of me imagine why I would have turned to it before bed. 

But regardless, the first thing I saw was two Fox hosts smugly announcing that the Strait of Hormuz was once again open and the inflated oil prices were rapidly dropping, and that the Stable Genius' prediction that it would reopen "naturally" and prices would soon return to normal have been proven true. "You see?," they were saying, the war was worth it, the ayatollah has been killed, and there was only minor and temporary disruption to the stock market and the economy.

Setting aside the morality or the consequences of assassinating the leader of another nation, no matter how despicable, the quick drop of the price per barrel of oil will not immediately be realized at the pump. Those prices, it's been said, tend to take the elevator to the top and the stairs coming down. But what really annoyed me in my 30 seconds of watching Fox News before I switched to another channel was the hosts' smug conclusion that the Stable Genius had been proven correct and had been right all along.

The unfortunate side effect of their smugness was that I wound up hoping the reopening wouldn't last and the Stable Genius would be proven wrong. I was cheering against my own and the world's well being. A closed Strait and skyrocketing oil prices puts not only my own retirement in peril, but negatively affects the entire world economy. Stable Genius Derangement Syndrome: my distaste for our so-called "president" has me cheering against my own economic interest. Ironically, my case of Derangement Syndrome came not because of the left's bashing of the President but was due to his media cheerleader's celebration.  

No Fox News this morning, thankfully, and no television, either, but I saw online that Iran has re-closed the Strait. This should be considered bad news, but my first reaction was, "Hah! Proves the Stable Genius was wrong!," not "Shit! Oil prices may never come back down again."

To be clear, I had let myself fall into Fox News' framing of the volatile and complicated situation in the Middle East. Before the Stable Genius decided to kill the ayatollah and bomb Iran, the Strait was open and had been open for decades. The price of oil fluctuated based on market factors of supply and demand, not the holding hostage of international waterways. But after a month of carnage, chaos, and disruption at the sole and inscrutable whims of the Stable Genius, the Strait is closed and the price of oil is stratospheric. 

The Stable Genius didn't re-open the Strait - which, remember, was open before his reckless adventures - but Iran did, and the reopening of the Strait is no "victory" for the U.S. or for the Stable Genius. At best, it merely puts a closing parenthesis on the damage and cost of the stupid war, and is no cause for celebration. No matter what the smirking white boys and their bleached blond cohosts on Fox News say.